Reposted from Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
by Judith Curry
There is a disturbing story coming out of the University of Washington surrounding Cliff Mass.
In preparing this article, I have received material from a member of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. I also ran into another member of the Department while at the AGU meeting this week, who corroborated these events. I conducted a 30 minute phone interview with Cliff Mass.
Who is Cliff Mass?
Cliff Mass has been a faculty member in the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Department since 1982. His research focuses on numerical weather modeling and prediction, the role of topography in the evolution of weather systems, and on the weather of the Pacific Northwest. In addition to his research publications, Cliff Mass has published a popular book entitled ‘Weather of the Pacific Northwest.’
Since 2008, Cliff Mass has maintained a popular blog Cliff Mass Weather and Climate. Mass posts regular articles on meteorology, Pacific Northwest weather history, and the impacts of climate change written for the general public.
He has 13,000 twitter followers. Mass also has a weekly radio show with 400,000 weekly listeners (!)
Cliff Mass – climate ‘denier’?
Cliff Mass has been characterized as a ‘sort of’ climate denier. The first reference to this is a 2015 article Cliff Mass: Scientific lies and the new climate deniers.
“He is also a dangerous new breed of climate skeptic. He has made a theme of downplaying the role of global warming in extreme weather events, and in exposing what he calls “overzealousness” in the scientific, media, and activist community.”
A 2017 article in Stranger entitled Why does Cliff Mass believe scientists and leftist journalists are exaggerating the dangers of climate change?
“Cliff Mass is not a climate denier, but he is their ally, which is as good as being a climate denier.”
The accusation of ‘denier’ got more explicit when Sarah Myre testified before the State of Washington House of Representatives: Can you be a climate scientist and an advocate?
“In February 2017, Sarah Myhre traveled to Washington’s capital, Olympia, to give testimony to the state House of Representatives Environment Committee. There, Representative Shelly Short, a Republican from northeastern Washington, asked her to comment on her colleague Mass’ unwillingness to link recent wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes to climate change. Myhre responded that she and many of her colleagues saw Mass’ recent views “as coming from a denialist or contrarian place.”
The Cascadia Daily states:
“Seattle weather guy and climate change denier Cliff Mass”
So, what does Cliff Mass have to say about climate change, in his own words? From an interview with the UW Alumni magazine and summary from the Wikipedia (based on my knowledge of Cliff’s opinions and writings, this is correct):
“According to Mass, “Global warming is an extraordinarily serious issue, and scientists have a key role to play in communicating what is known and what is not about this critical issue.
Mass has stated publicly that he shares the scientific consensus that global warming is real and that human activity is the primary cause of warming trends in the 20th and 21st centuries. He has been critical of the Paris Climate accord for not going far enough to address the negative impacts of climate change. However, Mass is also frequently critical of what he has characterizes as exaggerations of the past and current impacts of climate change in the news media, including the attribution of individual extreme weather events to global warming.”
The most recent ‘denier’ claims are associated with Cliff’s statements about the causes of the recent California fires: Cliff Mass: Climate change is real but . . .
“But Mass takes issue every time someone points to local extreme weather and says “that’s caused by climate change.”
The extremes we’ve seen in Seattle, around the region and even across the U.S. — most of them anyway — are caused by anomalous weather patterns, not climate change, Mass said.
There are, of course, those who would argue that by nitpicking such details, Mass only feeds ammunition to climate change deniers. Mass doesn’t want to downplay global warming; he just doesn’t want to stretch the truth to try and out-extreme those who would deny it. “So global warming’s very serious,” Mass said. “But it’s coming up in the future, not right now, for us.”
Sarah Myhre is not happy with Mass’ recent statements about the California wildfires. From an article by James Delingpole: Brown Fiddled While California Burned:
“One Dr Sarah Myhre – who, gloriously, bills herself as a “public scholar scientist advocate communicator” [actually, you know, just “activist” would have done] – tweeted at him “This. Is. Pure. Propaganda.” And then told a Washington radio station that had given him airtime that giving Cliff a “platform” was a “form of violence.”
So in summary, Cliff Mass accepts the consensus science. However he breaks with the ‘activists’ in terms of thinking it is a bad idea to falsely claim that extreme weather events are caused by AGW.
Initiative-1631
Most unforgivably, Mass broke with the progressive activists in terms of not supporting the latest carbon fee initiative in Washington, I-1631. Mass has long advocated for some sort of carbon tax: How to make a carbon tax work in Washington
Mass was a strong supporter of a previous carbon tax initiative (which was voted down). His concerns with I-1631 are described in three blog posts:
- If you worry about climate change and care about the environment, vote no on I-1631.
- Initiative I-1631: At odds with democratic values
- A Political analysis of I-1631: The carbon fee initiative
I don’t pretend to be an expert on I-1631 and I am not passing judgment here, but I will say that Mass’s position is well-supported and defensible.
For a perspective from the supporters of I-1631, I refer to Sarah Myhre’s article in the Stranger entitled New carbon tax initiative drafted with more color and less white supremacy. Reducing CO2 emissions seems to be a relatively minor factor; climate policy has become a crusade to change the balance of power:
“When climate policy is written by white men in a closed room, that is white supremacy.”
Things got really ‘interesting’ as a result Mass’ blog post ‘If you worry about climate change . . .’ , which had this statement:
“The initiative hardwires money to certain special interest groups–the left-leaning supporters of the measure. A minimum of ten percent of the money goes to Indian tribes, who are exempted from paying any carbon fee by the initiative. Labor advocates got a fifty million dollar fund, replenished annually, for worker support programs. And to provide funding to the social action groups pushing the initiative, 35% of the money goes to “pollution and health action areas” of minority and “vulnerable populations.” There is more, but you get the message (see the picture below).” [The picture was pigs at a trough.]
Mass’ point was that special interest groups were hardwired for a good portion of the funds. He wanted an image that illustrated ‘political pork’ and special interest groups feeding at the public trough and so he used the pigs at a trough image.
While there were no complaints about the image in the blog comments, a few of the activists at the UW claimed it was racist. Imagery of pigs at a public trough has been used for over a century, and has never been used to refer to minorities as far as Mass could identify. ‘Pigs at a trough’ is about the well-connected and privileged. Mass decided to be sensitive to the ‘feelings’ of thee activists and pulled the image. Then Mass received a number of messages after he pulled it, accusing him of giving in to mob rule. There was nothing racist or anything else inappropriate in the text, and no one has suggested there was. Apparently the mention of the phrase ‘Indian tribes’ in the same paragraph that references an image of pigs at the trough is sufficient to trigger an accusation of racism.
Note: I-1631 was voted down in the November election.
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Any scientist that is active in the public debate on climate change (no matter what their actual position in the debate) will invariably be subject to attacks on twitter, the blogosphere and even by journalists. That is part of the noise associated with the public debate on climate change. This noise shouldn’t matter, in the overall scheme of things.
However, it is a different kettle of fish when people from your own university, and even your own Department, go after you publicly, with the objective of stifling your freedom of speech. And then when University administrators get involved, a threatening situation can emerge.
A number of University of Washington graduate students have taken a vocal stance against Cliff Mass, particularly on twitter. These same activist students that were so upset about the pig picture participated in online character assassination, calling Mass every name in the book over the past six months because they are unhappy with his rejection of 1631 and his research/blog posts on wildfires and attribution of extreme events. They have accused him of deception, being on the payroll of oil companies, purposely obfuscating with multiple twitter accounts, racism, misogyny, tokenism, Trumpism. They are hypersensitive about any indirect criticism of their ‘side’ but are fine with name-calling and personal attacks on those they disagree with.
The attacks ramped up when a group of students complained to the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Rather than meet with Cliff Mass to discuss, the Assistant Dean sent a mass email to the faculty of the Atmospheric Sciences Department, with the following lede:
“a recent blog posting by a member of our community on a personal website included imagery and text that was racially insensitive and caused offense to a significant number of members in the departmental community.”
No attempt was made by this Assistant Dean to meet with Cliff Mass, or to understand that there was no racism evident or intended, and that the image in question was quickly removed from the blog post.
I will not ‘name and shame’ any of the graduate students here, who in any event are probably proud of their behavior. (JC note to students applying for jobs: search committees will check your social media presence). However, one graduate student in particular gets a ‘dishonorable’ mention here: Alex Lenferna, a Ph.D. candidate in the UW Philosophy Department with a Certificate in Atmospheric Science. He wrote a blog post that is basically a ‘hit-job’ on Cliff Mass, owing to his failure to support I-1631, including playing the ‘racism’ card. The blog post includes an image: Cliff Mass ‘hearts’ oil.
I won’t dignify Lenferna’s slime by reproducing any of it. This blog post is significant, however, because the Atmospheric Sciences Department Chair (Dale Durran) sent a mass email to the Department faculty including the link to Lenferna’s post, and voicing concern about Mass’ behavior and ‘racism’, and including the image Mass ‘hearts’ oil.
The Chair then called a general Department-wide meeting about the blog post Mass wrote, with the event billed as ‘controversy.’ An ombudsperson was enlisted to run the meeting, but the Chair took over, serving as inquisitor and critic. The Chair prevented Mass from finishing his opening comments and hectored Mass throughout the meeting. The activist students were true to form, hurling all kinds of insulting, personal and inappropriate remarks.
So what is going on here? Is the Department of Atmospheric Sciences making a stand against political activism by its faculty members? Hardly. In fact, the Chair, Dale Durran, pressured each of the faculty members to sign a statement supporting I-1631. This statement was published by the Seattle Times :
“Some know they must stop smoking, but can’t, and it wrecks their health. As spelled out in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, humanity has been acting like a chain smoker. Initiative 1631 gives us the chance to change. The opposition to I-1631 is largely concerned with the politics of taxing and spending. These are important matters, but they should not be endlessly debated in lieu of taking action. I-1631 is the third major effort to discourage carbon emissions in Washington state.
Science shows carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years, warming and dramatically changing the climate. Because of the way carbon accumulates, the emission reductions required to hold future changes in climate below any given level become more drastic with each year we wait to begin serious cuts.
Unlike the carbon emitted while waiting for a perfect law, passing I-1631 does not represent an irrevocable hundreds-of-years commitment. After a short period, I-1631 could be amended to make it even better.
Now is the time to take a big step to kick our carbon habit.
Dale Durran, professor and chair, and 21 other professors in the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Washington, Seattle (the views expressed here are those of the authors and not UW)”
While many of the faculty members appear to have signed this enthusiastically (based on their signatures on other lists related to I-1631), I’ve been told that several faculty members felt uncomfortable signing this. One of the faculty members I spoke with said they felt compelled to sign the letter since they didn’t want to stand up to Chair; this individual told me they voted against I-1631.
There are several people in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences that don’t like Cliff Mass (including, obviously, the Chair). They are concerned about his status as Washington’s ‘celebrity’ scientist – being either envious of this status or concerned that this status makes Mass relatively immune to ‘pressure’ from Departmental leadership. But most fundamentally, they seem to dislike that his blog is getting in the way of their own political advocacy.
JC reflections
The climate change advocacy disease seems to have affected many of the UW faculty and graduate students. Apart from the issue of activism potentially getting in the way of scientific objectivity, the big issue here is that the Chair attempted to ‘institutionalize’ this activism with the I-1631 support letter. I have to say I find this very inappropriate behavior for a Chair, and I’m surprised that the higher administration didn’t reprimand him for this (in the old days I would have been reprimanded for this at Georgia Tech, but under the current administration, who knows). Faculty members were pressured into signing that letter, since the Chair controls their reappointments and promotions, salary, teaching assignments, etc. The public ‘shaming’ meeting is beyond the pale, particularly the Chair’s behavior during this meeting. After this behavior, I cannot imagine how the UW faculty and administration can have any confidence in the leadership of their current Chair.
And finally, a closing comment about Cliff Mass. While this can’t be fun for him, I’m not too worried about Cliff Mass: Cliff has friends in high places and an enormous ‘bully pulpit’ in terms of his blog and radio show. Trying to take him down isn’t going to work.
I have much more to say on this situation and the broader implications, I will write more in a follow on post.
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Someone, somewhere needs to point out to the leftists on this campus that you don’t overcome scientific positions with petitions, clamoring for firing, or nasty comments. The Chair over the department should know this and act accordingly. This doesn’t mean participating in crowd noise or firing apostates. You refute science with science not clamoring about consensus.
I recently began reading an online magazine called Quillette. It has made me aware that some lefties are becoming dissatisfied with the pc crowd. They are beginning to eat their own, witness the comedians and other Hollywood types being crucified and some are starting to wonder where this will all end. This affair is certainly similar by bringing racism into play when the original article is about science. How absurd can you get. Some of these people need to read the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller to see where this will all end.
Forty years ago the U. of W. was the beneficiary of Washington States’ forests. Timber sales from state forests provided funds for the University. This had two beneficial effects. The University was somewhat independent of political pressures. And the University took an interest in proper management of their resource. The State took over control of the forests and their revenues in the early 80s, and it has been all down hill since, for the forests and the University.
It is sad to see such bullying happen to anyone, but it is a relatively common tale (e.g. Peter Ridd.) As a member of a campus community it may be tempting to think that you share some common ground with your peers. But the underlying “philosophy” of post modernism is anathema to the Western culture of scientific inquiry. There is no common ground with those who embrace this screed. Scientists are likely to be blind to this reality, since the whole notion of what passes for this “philosophy” is so contrary to what used to pass for education in the sciences. What is actually a call to a fascist tyranny is likely to be seen by old school scientists as just a harmless exploration of futuristic dreams, not unlike science fiction.
Newton stood on the shoulder of giants. Our generation of scientists and engineers took it for granted that we needed to understand the principles and practices that led discoveries like those made by Newton. Not so today. If you take a careful look at something as simple as geometry as taught in our public schools, you will find that it is now an exercise in memorization and pattern recognition. No logic, no progression of increasingly complex proofs and theorems, just a “portfolio” with pictures of squares and triangles as seen in structures. Students must memorize the “Law of Cosines”, but having done so, don’t have a clue about using it. It’s just a pattern of upper and lower case letters with a few Greek letters thrown in to make it more interesting visually.
National Academies of Science focus on climate change; Organized for some time, funded by the government (taxpayers) via Congress (2009, on). I found the demographic profiling in this chapter on specific strategies (to brainwash the public) very interesting and insightful:
Example of many specifically from the National Academies Press (might as well be called the Ministry of Climate Propaganda) including identification of and dealing (re-educating) with “climate deniers”.
Title: Climate Change Education: Goals, Audiences, and Strategies: A Workshop Summary (2011)
Chapter: 3 Implications of Audience Research and Segmentation for Education Strategies
https://www.nap.edu/read/13224/chapter/4#37
INTRODUCTION
The global scientific and policy community now unequivocally accepts that human activities cause global climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007; National Research Council, 2010a). The scientific consensus has been translated for a broad public and policy makers in a variety of recent reports (National Research Council, 2010b; National Science Foundation, 2009; U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2009). Although information on climate change is now readily available, the nation still seems unprepared or unwilling to respond effectively to climate change, due partly to a general lack of public understanding of climate change issues and opportunities for effective responses (Leiserowitz, 2003; Leiserowitz and Smith, 2010; Leiserowitz, Moser, and Dilling, 2007; Patchen, 2006; Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2007, 2009). The reality of global climate change lends increasing urgency to the need for effective education on earth system science, as well as on the human and behavioral dimensions of climate change, from broad societal action to smart energy choices at the household level (Gardner and Stern, 2008).
The public’s limited understanding of climate change is partly the result of four critical challenges that have slowed development and delivery of effective climate change education. First, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that the underlying science of climate change is inherently difficult for most learners to comprehend (Boyes and Stanisstreet, 1993, 1997, 2001; Coyle, 2005) and for educators or schools to competently teach (Abbasi, 2006; National Research Council, 2007; Storksdieck, 2006). Furthermore, the connection between science and society that is implied in climate change education aimed at changing people’s behavior makes the task of teaching and learning more difficult still (Gardner and Stern, 2008; Heimlich and Ardoin, 2008). Second, achieving the broad range of goals of climate change education requires a cross-disciplinary approach, blending education with the learning, social, behavioral, and economic sciences as well as earth systems science. Third, the myriad of federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses invested in climate change education may duplicate efforts and waste limited resources without a forum for coordination, cooperation, and alignment of overall education strategies. Fourth, like evolution, climate change has become a highly politicized topic in the policy arena and in education, and people’s willingness to be educated or to learn depends on their attitude toward the issue itself (Gardner and Stern, 2008; Leiserowitz and Smith, 2010).
As one response to these challenges, Congress, in its 2009 and 2010 appropriation process, requested that the National Science Foundation (NSF) create a program in climate change education to provide funding to external grantees to improve climate change education in the United States. The Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) Program is part of a major investment of the federal government directed toward climate change education, involving a variety of players, including, among others, the National Science Foundation; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Energy; and the U.S. Geological Survey.
To support and strengthen these education initiatives, and in response to the 2009 congressional mandate connected to NSF’s funding for a climate change education program, the Board on Science Education of the National Research Council (NRC), in collaboration with the Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change and the Division on Earth and Life Studies, created the Climate Change Education Roundtable. The roundtable provides a forum for dialogue between practitioners and experts in multiple disciplines relevant to climate change education. It facilitates collaboration across federal agencies and private organizations, helping to promote unique contributions and align overall education strategies.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/07/the-sad-case-of-dr-sarah-myhre/
Nuf said.
There is the scientific theory of global warming (often wrongly labelled “climate change”) and there is the political cause of CAGW (always dishonestly labelled “climate change”).
The problem is, the activists and their enablers in the media and politics blur the line between the scientific study and the political movement so that the activists can put on the mantel of science and use it to beat anyone who gets in the way of their policy goals.
The fact that Moss accepts that humans are making a dangerous contribution to global warming is irrelevant. What matters is that he is inconvenient to the activists.
Denayer used to mean denaying any piece of the global warming dogma. Now it means denaying any piece of the progressive leftist dogma. We have seen before how the team players are disappeared, one by one, with Stalin for example.
The ironic part is that Cliff Mass is one of the very few claimed Climate Scientists who actually does legitimate climate/weather modelling.
Sarah Myhre: “When climate policy is written by white men in a closed room, that is white supremacy.”
She also wrote that climate policies have, “been characterized by white male power brokering…”
So now we know, from testimony out of her own mouth, that Sarah Myhre is a racist as well as a sexist.
But it is politically fashionable racism and sexism which makes it valorized and ever so seductive to those addicted to moralizing smugery (Sarah Myhre seems such. She also thinks that Seattle being “carbon neutrality by 2050 [is] not untethered from reality.” Sarah Myhre is untethered from reality.).
The Departmental inquisition of Cliff Mass was a show trial and nothing else. With Dale Durran as the reincarnation of Andrei Vyshinsky. Dale Durran is probably proud of his attained stature.
Were these people to have real power, you can bet that Cliff Mass would be imprisoned. They’d have him tortured until he confessed to conspiracy and named his partners in crime.
This is the ineluctable logic of the American left, actively, even eagerly, nurtured by Sarah Myhre, Dale Durran and all the rest.
They should be careful. The lesson of history is that the mob may well eventually come for them.
‘The lesson of history is that the mob may well eventually come for them.’
And in the end, the result is all destruction.
It’s all so unnecessary. Yet it seems there’s no stopping it.
Agreed, Joel. It seems unstoppable.
Here at Stanford, so-called diversity and inclusion are about to make big inroads in merit hiring. It’s infected every single school.
President Marc Tessier-Lavinge and provost Persis Drell are actively promoting it. Persis is a particle physicist. You’d think she’d know better than to suppose that sociological and feminist theorizing is objective knowledge. But apparently not. They are remaking Stanford in that cause.
Stanford University, soon to be a shining beacon of institutional bigotry, intellectual mediocrity, and pseudo-scholarship.
The only possible cure is removal of all federal money from universities that teach and pursue political advocacy. Political advocacy violates the neutrality requirement for public money, and faculty who teach political advocacy suborn the tenure agreement.
Sarah Myhre is Exhibit A in the case for patriarchy. When you select by quotas instead of merit, you do not get the best and the brightest. As explained by Jordan Peterson here:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-gender-scandal-in-scandinavia-and-canada
What he does not say here is that if you select from an identity group, you will get people with a chip on their shoulder.
Sarah Myhre is in hard science with a soft science mind, if that, if she is scientific at all.
There’s nothing wrong with women in science, this woman has disproved herself.
She openly admits that it’s not a question of if, but of when she gets ejected from academia.
This type of behavior has become common and is a clear sign of an ideological position not open to new information. Suppression of opposing positions in stead of falsifying their message is tantamount to confessing no capability to disprove them using reason. The treatment of Salby (https://mlsxmq.wixsite.com/salby-macquarie/page-1f) and
Harde (https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored) are further examples of this lack of ability to persuade by reason.
Salby’s comment at 1:24:30 in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=750&v=rohF6K2avtY) is truly apropos.
Isn’t it ironic that those that posture against bullying seem to use that as their go-to tactic?
Sort of like fascism is the go-to tactic of ‘anti-fascists’.
They are the people they warned you about…
Well put.
Cliff Mass is a supporter of ‘Carbon Taxes’ and other ‘Climate Change’ wealth redistribution schemes.
While I find the personal attacks of Sarah Myhre and others against Cliff Mass reprehensible, I see this as a case of climate extremists ‘eating one of their own’ for not being a sufficiently extreme team player.
We are the Borg..resistance is futile…You will assimilate…
In the old East European countries when someone would, by using undeniable facts, point to shortcomings in official policy, the government controled media starts the ball rolling by planting fake stories at an escalating rate, descrediting the person in question. Sooner or later the he/she would end up behind bars as an ‘enemy’ of system or even word an ‘enemy’ of state.
It is simply the reality of parts of humanity with no mercy to a dissident.
It’s a wake-up call for all those who cherish freedom, it matters not be it political, religious, scientific or just free thinking.
The current blog post by Cliff Mass is called “Seattle’s Darkest Day in Three Years”.
No, he is not referring to his own troubles.
The message to all scientists is clear. The activists and the public will love you if you agree with them, they will character-assassinate you if you don’t. They will claim to love science, but what they really mean is they love anything which supports their own goals.
Scientists owe it to themselves to be skeptical all the way down. Trust no one.
The zealots are running scared.
From Victor Hugo’s 1845 essay ‘Villemain’:
“You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.”
More evidence of the “tolerance” of the “tolerant left” ?
Leftist ideology is simply defective to the core.
This incident should be taught side by side with a history lesson about guillotining during the French Revolution.
Yep.
Basically, the French Revolution (and most other revolutions), consisted of:
1) guillotining the rich and powerful
2) guillotining the not-quite-as-rich-and-powerful
3) guillotining the not-quite-as-rich-and-powerful wannbes
4) guillotining those just under the completely arbitrary not-quite-as-rich-and-powerful threshold
5) guillotining anyone who complains that everyone who should be guillotined has already been guillotined
6) guillotining anyone who has angered the guillotiners for any other reason
etc.
Repeat as needed.
Mass has just encountered #6.
7) The guillotiners get the guillotine, e.g, Robespierre.
…Ah, yes, missed that one. I was re-typing an old list.
Basically, all revolutions turn in on the revolutionaries, mostly because most of the ideas that revolutionaries have don’t actually solve any problems, they just “guillotine” the enemy.
Its pure politics, not evolution, rapid or otherwise.
Cliff Mass believes in CAGW. I have no sympathy for him. He is deluded. The fact that the U of Washington is picking on him because he refuses to lie about extreme weather events puts him in the same class as Roger Pielke Jr. Both are deluded about CAGW. The BIG LIE crucifies anybody that doesnt go along with it 100%. The alarmists control all the faculties in the world. People like Cliff Mass are finding out that you cant change the system from the inside even if you are in the inside. They will soon put you on the outside.
Between this story, and others I’ve heard and read about, it seems universities have become more like cults than centers of higher learning.
Apparently Cliff Mass has been pushing back. Story at the Daily Caller.
The story also says that the image described as, “imagery and text that was racially insensitive and caused offense” was one of pigs feeding at a trough.
Such images are commonly applied to subsidy-driven industries and to NGOs that batten on ill-got public money. There’s nothing racist about it, although one can imagine that environmental activists would resent the accurate description of their monied interests.
Cliff Mass’ blog post is here, absent any pictures of pigs in troughs.
He should not have removed that picture, in my view. Instead, he should have highlighted it, and added a few derisive comments about green leftists resenting an accurate depiction of themselves.
The head-post doesn’t say that any text was removed from Chris Mass’ blog post. I have looked in vain for racially insensitive text.
I’d suggest that his critics are luridly delusional, including (especially) Philosophy PhD candidate Alex Lenferna. Mr. Lenferna lists “applied ethics” as one of his interests. The irony, it burns. So much for Philosophy making one thoughtful and philosophical.). But delusional to an end, and that end is violent oppression.
Look at the accusations leveled at Mass, as Judith Curry lists them: “deception, being on the payroll of oil companies, purposely obfuscating with multiple twitter accounts, racism, misogyny, tokenism, Trumpism.”
They sound like an accusatory play-list from Stalin’s Soviet Union. Thought crimes ending in “-ism.” All supported by Dale Durran. And that guy calls himself a scientist.
An ironical note for Sarah Myhre is that Dale Durran is an older white male who arrogated power in an abusive and illicit manner so as to inject prejudice into Chris Mass’s Departmental show-trial.
One would suppose that Sarah Myhre would release her harangue against that display — a perfect example of her vision of white male privilege — were she ethically coherent.
Ethics in a racist sexist green fanatic … what a concept.
Alex Lenferna is a Doctoral Candidate in the UW Dept of Philosophy, “…specializing in climate justice.” Well, that explains it. Can’t spread around some of that climate justice stuff without a carbon dioxide tax.
In Reflections on a Ravaged Century (1999) historian Robert Conquest described “pseudoscholarship” in the US Academy and by extension in the West as having had dozens of ephemeral orthodoxies come and go in various fields with “a higher charge of certainty than of knowledge”.
Describing one conference (on Modern Language): “… the thirty-year-olds who made up the majority of those attending, gave one a strong feeling that they knew only too well that they were caught up in something worthless or harmful, scuttling about like beetles in some ‘Sartrean’ hell. They were, of course, doing what was necessary to secure employment …”.
” They were, of course, doing what was necessary to secure employment ”
Exactly.
And some people are now paying attention. Here in Ontario, Canada, we elected a conservative government, and they’ve started to (gasp!) cut spending, including universities and colleges (where most of people with worthless degrees work, if they can’t get government work directly.)
Unfortunately, its too early to see if this will leave enough money for real education and research. Those social “science” dweebs are pretty good at the political infighting…
And these climate alarmist probably despise/hate fundamentalist Christians as closed-minded, intolerant wackos. They should only look in the mirror and weep for what they have become – far worse.
Cliff Mass is a member of the Warmista Group, but is not adhering strictly to the Party Line and so he must be called out for it. The hard core Zealots have pushed him to the outer wastelands of Warmism.
Judith Curry was also pushed out when she wavered on some of the GW topics, which over time helped her see what Skeptics face and become more receptive to skeptical viewpoints.
Much the same scenario is being played out with Peter Ridd at James Cook University in Australia.
He has been a critic of mainstream views on coral bleaching and the reported ‘death’of much of The Great Barrier Reef.
The trial of his case for reinstatement at the University has been delayed until early next year.
I have donated to his go fund me campaign which happily raised enough money in two days to cover some $160,000 in legal fees.
Essentially he has been accused of not being “ collegiate” with the views of his colleagues and breaching his contract of employment.
Another nail in the coffin of free speech in science.
Cliff Mass always presents good reasoning, well written, and data driven blog articles. I think he goes too far in support of the dangers of global warming, and sometimes gets carried away. He does live and work in the Puget Sound leftist cesspool.
The political weight in Washington State is on the west side of the Cascades. The “State” is all-in on the global warming train wreck. If you work in the State, or in any way receive State funding, it is assumed you will support CAGW. The current governor, Jay Inslee, apparently believes he should become POTUS and that being “green” will help him achieve this goal.
Both of the attempts at taxing CO2 in the State of Washington have been disgusting, and rightly voted down.
Now the Inslee administration will try to get their ideas accomplished in other ways, until they can go for another, and another vote. Democrats want the money. Inslee wants the “green” credit.
Just a correction, John. They want to tax “carbon”, which leaves the door wide open to tax anything with C in it.
I don’t know how the drawing of the pigs at the trough can be racist, speciest perhaps, and quite insulting to the pigs.
Given the context of the blog & the cartoon, the only possible interpretation is that the complainants see a correlation between pigs & race, are the ones that are racist.